That Which Binds Us, It's All Survival
by Mimi Polite
Summary: For the Mallrats, taking in lost orphan Kylie is an act of goodwill. When they discover that her and her sister can be the tipping point in the war for the city, it's no longer about kindness it's about survival.


_Notes before reading: I started this fanfic under a different name, but because I'm strange and fickle, I decided to change it and make some improvements to the story. _

_There's a very specific reason why I labeled this fic M. In America (at least in California), the show is rated TV-PG, with good reason. My fic will be a tad bit rougher around the edges. Teenagers – no supervision? Things are bound to be tougher than they seem on the show. Hope you like it, please read and respond. _

_I'm not quite sure exactly what point in time this fic takes place…somewhere along the way, I'll let you know. _

Sammy, his brow heavily furrowed, glanced towards the fan of cards that he held in hands. Not particularly inspiring. Opposite of him, after examining her own cards, Gel stretched her arms upwards, the hem of her shirt lifting a fraction of an inch to reveal the creamy tan of her belly. The smile that played on her pink, glossed lips was a teasing one, one that in the past few months, Sammy had grown very accustomed to seeing.

"Sammy," she chirped suddenly, tossing her own cards onto the table and pushing her weight back to lean in the dining chair with a bright twinkle in her heavily-lined eyes. "Want to make me a sandwich?" In a move she had seen in countless of movies, and she thought particularly effective, Gel fluttered her thick eyelashes, teasing a dimple into the corner of her mouth

Sammy, flicking his large eyes up towards the older teenager across from him, squirmed in his chair, and with a sigh, carefully flipping his cards face-down onto the table – it had been a losing hand, anyway. "B-but, Gel, there's a food shortage…..a-and Amber and Salene said we should try to conserve what food we have left."

Unperturbed by Sammy's obvious hesitation and well into the mastering phases of adolescent manipulation, Gel coaxed her plumped lower lip into a pout, leaning forward to place her elbow onto the hard plastic of the table and propping her chin onto the palm of her hand. "But Sammy, Amber is sleeping and no one knows where Salene is."

"But I'm here." At the annoyed timber, both of the teenagers turned to watch as Lex, dark-eyed and broody, swagger into the dining area. With a small smirk playing on the corner of his mouth and a clever gleam in his eye, Lex focused his attention down onto the table. "Gel, I'll understand if common sense can't find its way to your brain past all the make-up and hairspray you insist on shoveling on, but there is no food to waste." He shifted his hard gaze to Sammy, lifting his eyebrows the slightest bit. "You," he said, as Sammy gave another uncomfortable squirm and attempted to sink further into the chair, "you know how we operate around here."

Momentarily speechless, Gel shoved her chair back, planting her palms against the table and pushing herself up to stand. The layers of her skirt flounced. "Oh, Lex, why do you say such things?" Her mouth hung just slightly open, the pure audacity of Lex's nonchalant and uncalculated rudeness lost on her.

"Why not? Wait," Without waiting for a response, Lex lifted a hand, tilting his head – as if he were taking a better listen for something. For a moment, he was silent. "Does anyone hear that..?" He glanced towards both Gel and Sammy. There was, in fact, an unusual noise coming from somewhere in the mall, as if someone was beating upon the metal gates that closed the mall and its occupants in.

"I…don't hear anything." Gel lifted and dropped her bare shoulders in a nonchalant shrug, rolling her eyes upwards. Obviously, she preferred to play the fool rather than seek out the source of the noise.

The responding growl rumbled low in Lex's throat before he snapped out. "Why don't you go paint your toenails, Barbie?"

"Oh, what do you know, anyway?" Her jaw hung agape, and with her eyes narrowed at both Lex's comment and Sammy's responding childish snickering, Gel turned sharply on her heels to stalk towards her room, her layered pink skirts bouncing and her boots clicking.

Wordlessly, Lex flicked the fingers of his hand, motioning for Sammy to follow him towards the mall's garage doors. Down the stairs and near the basement level of the mall, the door was easily found. The noise pounded in from the other side and had the medium-grade steal shaking and rumbling. Someone…was there, using both fists and feet to catch the attention on whoever might've been on the other side. There was yelling, and the words were largely muffled, but judging from the high-pitched squeal of the voice and the waning strength of the door, it was easy to tell that whoever was on the other side was obviously a small child.

"What on Earth is going on down here? Who's banging on the door?" With her gurgling son bouncing happily on her hip, Amber rushed down the stairs, her eyes wide with concern and more than a touch wary as she caught the gazes of both Lex and Sammy. "Lex, who's out there?"

"Are we being attacked?" With fear live in her eyes, Trudy rounded the corner, taking her place next to Amber.

"I don't think so. Let's find out who it is." While the tiny voice continued to wail on, Lex reached out to flip open the door of the tiny power box that had been fixed next to the garage door. After a quick inspection of the mechanism rusted mechanism, he gave a slow, hard turn to the thick key that had been jammed into the ignition. With a loud groan and an ear-bleeding screech of protest, the rusted garage door began its shuddering roll upwards. The Mallrats watched the door, some with wide eyes, the others with narrow, cautious ones. All were ready for some sort of action.

With a hiccupping sob, the small girl on the other side darted underneath the edge of the door as it continued its rise. After a small moment to look around through a rush of tears, and without hardly a thought, ran forward and heavily attached herself to Amber's legs.

"Hey-! Oh, sweetie." Easily keeping her balance as the child continue to wail, Amber passed her son to a concerned Trudy, who expertly started bouncing the baby boy in her arms, as she had done with her own daughter. Amber settled onto her haunches, and in a move that comes second nature to all mothers and mother-figures, wrapped the girl into a hug. Her voice low and soft, Amber ran her hand over the child's back. "Tell me what's wrong. Breathe. Try again. Breathe. There you go…." Amber instructed after the girl gave a series of broken noises and hiccups – a childish attempt at words through a storm of tears. Lex, Sammy, and Trudy passed looks between them and stared on.

"Okay," Amber said after a long moment, releasing the child from the embrace to hold her at arm's length. With a faint, comforting smile resting on her lips, she gently brushed a stray curly cue from the girl's forehead, tucking it into the collection of long brown spirals tied near the top of the girl's head. "Why don't we start with names, okay? My name is Amber."

With eyes, a very lovely shade of honey brown, flooded with tears, the girl watched Amber. With her hiccups faded and her tongue unclogged of its tears, talking came easier now. "Kylie." Her voice, the same one that had been screaming so forcefully before, was no more than a timid whisper.

"Well, Kylie." Amber inspected the girl's dirt-smeared face. By the traces of color spread in streaks across her cheeks, Amber was able to come to the conclusion that Kylies face had once been decorated to represent which tribe she came from – assuming she just wasn't some wandering kid – and that the paint had began to rub off long ago. Her skin was a shade or two lighter than a rich caramel. "That's Trudy," she said, pointing. "That's Lex, and Sammy, and my son, Bray."

"Hi," both Trudy and Sammy responded with their natural friendliness. Lex, on the other hand, only crossed his arms over his chest, lifting his eyebrows again in his own way of saying hello.

"Hi…." Kylie's response was still low, her eyes aimed downwards towards the scuffed and scarred toes of her shoes.

"Kylie," Amber continued, gently drawing the child's attention back up towards her. When their eyes met, she continued. "It might be hard, but will you tell me what's wrong?"

"M-my sister is dead." A tear, fat and heavy, spilled from the corner of Kylie's eye and rolled down her cheek.

Amber could feel her heart break into a million pieces as Trudy clutched onto Bray, sucking air into her lungs with a sharp gasp. Amber opened her mouth to speak, but found that for a few moments, no words would form on her tongue. At length, she stuttered the only question that came to mind. "A-are you sure, Kylie?"

"Yes." Her head naturally tilting down towards her shoes, Kylie's sweet little face crumpled as one large crocodile tear after another began to flow freely down her face, mixing into long smears with the dirt on her cheeks. Her shoulders shook helplessly as she gave a high-pitched whine and began to cry earnestly.

"Kylie…." By Amber's guess, the girl couldn't have been over six years old. She was probably too young to remember her parents' death from the virus, but to witness her sister die….. "What happened?"

"We….we were walking for forever and a long, long time," Kylie squeezed her eyes shut, her entire body shuddering as she worked her words around the sobs that played from her lips. "And then one day she just fell over, and-and-and she wasn't moving!" A long series of sobs had Amber momentarily turning her eyes away. The girl's heartbreaking retelling was almost too much for her to bear. "I shook her, and-and she never got up. She just….never got up. She's dead!" As habit, Kylie had toyed with her fingers in front of her, lifting her shoulders as if she meant to cast a protective shell around herself.

Lex, focusing on the tiniest bit of information that might've been very vital, watched the child. "So you say that she just fell? Was it hot, Kylie, or was it cold?"

"Lex!" Amber admonished, hugging the child to her and sending a hot glare in Lex's general direction.

"No, wait. Answer me, Kylie. When your sister fell, was it really hot or really cold?"

"Hot. It was really hot." Kylie's answer came quick and honest as she lifted her head from Amber's shoulder. She focused in on Lex, the tears continuing to stream freely down her face.

"And you and your sister, did you ever have anything to drink…..or eat?"

Kylie's tears ceased while she momentarily pondered on Lex's latest inquiry, her concentration proving an effective way to forget the tragedy at hand. "She…she gave me food and water. She had a pack that she kept around her waist and a can…a can…toon…"

"Canteen," Lex corrected. "You said that she gave you food and water, but did you ever see her take anything for herself, or drink anything?"

"No…."Kylie's head, and the curly afro puff ponytail on top of it, bobbed with each heavy shudder of her small frame, and within seconds, Kylie had given herself up to the heart-wrenching sobs that racked her body, collapsing into Amber's waiting arms.

Satisfied and smug, Lex turned his look to Amber and nodded towards the wailing child. "There you go. No need to thank me."

The light of realization flashed in Amber's dark eyes, but her frown was as disapproving as always. She began to shake her head even before she spoke. "Lex, I follow you, but that's a horribly long shot. What if we're wrong?"

"We're not. I mean, there's always a chance, isn't there? Extreme heat, no food or water to sustain her. I'd say that her sister might be very close to dying, but not quite dead yet."

"She's not dead yet!?" Lifting her head once more, Kylie looked towards Lex. Her voice lifted in both volume and pitch. "You can find her?!"

Amber looked back towards the girl, reaching out to smooth at the disarrayed hair again. "We'll try, sweetie. Lex and Trudy and I are going to –."

"Lex?" Lex interrupted, holding up a hand and shaking his head. "Oh, no, Lex isn't going to do anything. Lex has business to take care of."

For a moment, all Amber could do was stare. "Tell me you're joking." Kylie momentarily forgotten, Amber rose to her feet, speaking through her teeth and tense lips. "You're going to allow her sister to die?"

"Hey, it's not my problem."

"No. It never is, is it?" Trudy gritted her teeth against the hot anger that spiked in her blood. She kept her grip firm on the baby she held, fearing that if her hands were free, she'd use them to choke the life out Lex.

"Look, why don't you find Jay or May or Salene to help you find her? I contributed. I came up with the idea that she might be alive. I've got better things to do." With that said, and with a full-blown smirk dominating his features, Lex left them behind and walked directly past Amber and Kylie and away.

"This is a life at stake, Lex, and it's more important than some idiotic bar!" But Amber only screamed to Lex's backside. After suppressing an enraged scream and allowing herself a moment of composure, Amber forced a smile onto her quivering lips, reaching out to playfully tweak the tip of Kylie's nose. "We're going to find your sister, okay?"

_That's it! Hope you like the beginning. If you've read the other one, I hope you like the changes that I've made. Please review!_


End file.
